Zuma’s MK party is not even masking its attempt to capture the judiciary

If there is one political party that does not even pretend to be about the business of improving people’s lives (not even its own constituents), never mind building a cohesive, equal, just, healthy and prosperous society, it is former president Jacob Zuma’s calamitous MK party.

Looking at its leadership composition, which consists of rogue and shady characters who have diced with the law and are known to be Zuma loyalists, one is convinced that the best interests of South Africans are not represented there.

We have yet to hear or see them address the issues of poverty, unemployment, lack of access to adequate healthcare services and so on that their constituents face, but we have heard and seen a lot about them jostling for power and influential positions.

The party’s latest move was a brazen attempt to field disgraced former judge John Hlophe to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Hlophe was impeached in February and subsequently joined MK.

A quick search on Hlophe will reveal the following eyebrow-raising lowlights:

On his appointment as judge president he was also appointed as a non-executive director of Oasis’s Crescent Retirement Fund, receiving about R500,000 in consultancy fees, which he did not initially declare to the South African Revenue Service or the justice minister.

In 2007, Hlophe asked the government to buy him a Porsche in keeping with his status. Judges are given Mercedes-Benzes.

In 2008, the judges of the Constitutional Court filed a complaint of judicial misconduct against Hlophe on the grounds that he had sought to influence the outcome of a matter relating to then deputy president Zuma’s corruption charges.

In April 2021, the Judicial Conduct Tribunal found Hlophe guilty of gross misconduct. The decision was confirmed by the JSC, which recommended that Parliament impeach and remove him from the Bench as per section 177 of the Constitution.

In February 2024, a parliamentary majority made Hlophe the first judge to be impeached in democratic South Africa.

Now this last part is the most interesting. Somehow MK thought it appropriate and in good order to choose Hlophe as a candidate for the very institution that recommended he be removed for gross misconduct.

After Hlophe’s 2008 controversy, a campaign by some members of the ANC to discredit the courts ensued. One might remember our current minister of mineral resources and energy, Gwede Mantashe, leading the charge by calling Constitutional Court  judges “counter-revolutionary forces”. This is a narrative Zuma has run with.

Read more: Tensions of post-Hlophe Western Cape High Court laid bare before JSC

The judiciary was the last line of defence during the years of state institution plunder and incapacitation, with Zuma at its centre, so it is all the more suspicious that the party’s candidate to the JSC is Hlophe.

We must not lose sight of the quality of the political candidates we allow into the National Assembly, and in the case of Hlophe and the MK party, we find a potential reprisal of nefarious power. Although Hlophe may not be the fielded candidate this time, MK retains a seat in the JSC, which we hope will not be abused once filled. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.